


Mistaken for Home

by Amand_r



Category: Torchwood
Genre: F/M, Gen, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-04-07
Updated: 2011-04-07
Packaged: 2017-10-17 17:32:30
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,516
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/179289
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Amand_r/pseuds/Amand_r
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Jack versus afghan.  Jack versus sentimentality.  Jack versus home.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Mistaken for Home

**Author's Note:**

> PAP. SRSLY. Possibly cracky. Spoilers for everything in the universe. Lightly. Hold the mayo. Really, I'm just trying to get a feel for all these people. Results may vary. Consult your physician.

"And any man who knows a thing knows he knows not a damn damn thing at all."  
\--K'naan, 'Take A Minute'

 

Gwen brought in the afghan two months after she started. It was something Jack only noticed because it was an eyesore on the back of the sofa: orange, rust, white and yellow in zigzags. Something only a sixty-year-old lady or someone who loved the seventies would bother to crochet. (Now, granted, the sofa was also rather 1970s-doctor-office chic, but that didn't matter because it was functional and comfortable and he had many memories of pleasant things on that sofa.)

But the afghan was too much. He grabbed it and waved it in Gwen's face as she looked up from the pile of expense reports on her desk.

"Yes?"

"What," he said, "is this?"

Gwen's eyes widened when she looked at the afghan, and then at him, as if he were insane. "It's an afghan, Jack."

"And why is it here?"

Gwen's mouth twitched. "Sometimes it's cold," she said. "Down here."

Jack tossed it at her and tamped down a stab of irritation. "If you need something to keep you warm, all you have to do is ask," he grated out, and even to his ears the innuendo was frightfully dreadful. Insincere. Angry. "Keep it at your desk," he finally said before going off to harass Owen in the autopsy theatre.

But he noticed that it was folded neatly into a rectangle and draped across the back of the sofa by the end of the day.

*

It was late at night or very early in the day, and regardless, Tosh still hadn't left from the previous day. Jack saw her at her desk, feet up on the console, very un-Tosh-like, but her keyboard was remote and settled in her lap. Her fingers flew over the keys and her eyes never left the screen, even when he set the mug of tea on the console so that she could reach it.

Mary was still fresh in her memory, he knew, and something in her must have decided that the best way to get over it was to bury herself in her work. Jack, an expert at burying himself in work, at burying himself in Torchwood, especially, simply patted her shoulder and watched the numbers fly across one screen while another one stretched out patterns in what looked like a screensaver but what was probably some sort of two-dimensional Rift equation modifier.

"Thank you," Tosh murmured, then resumed the clacking of the keys.

Jack studied her for a minute, then noticed that she had wrapped Gwen's afghan around her feet like a giant mitten. It moved as she wiggled her toes when she mulled over maths and equations, her fingers pausing for scant seconds before resuming their seemingly endless stream.

He was going to ask her about the afghan, to joke about buying her a pair of fuzzy slippers, possibly shaped like furry feet or rabbits, but he had the distinct feeling that she'd smile politely and say no thank you.

*

Gwen and Ianto were ensconced on the sofa looking through a bunch of old Torchwood photographs that Ianto had uncovered in the archives when Jack happened by them.

"Oooh, Jack, the sideburns!" Gwen giggled, flipping a picture to face him.

He smiled. "I made that look good."

Ianto rolled his eyes. "No one makes mutton chops look good, Sir."

Gwen's eyes widened. "Except Hugh Jackman," she said, hitting Ianto's upper arm.

"I suppose yes, except for Hugh Jackman as the indestructible Wolverine."

Jack shoved one hand in his pocket and took the photo from her, examining his own grim face. Gwen pulled another photo out of the pile and snickered. "And this, well, this has no explanation, right?" She turned the photo towards him, revealing Jack in a woman's dress.

Jack took that picture too and grinned in spite of himself. What, was the archive just chockablock with incriminating photos of Torchwood Gone Wild? "There was a good reason for this. A _real_ reason," he added, pocketing the photos. "Not a fetish or something. Well, not that one time."

Gwen waited, and when he didn't offer the reason, Ianto just sighed. Jack watched the two of them bend over the photos again, sifting through memories, through what seemed to be mostly _his_ memories, sitting on the sofa, Gwen's lap covered with that hideous afghan.

"I told you to take that home," he said suddenly, feeling petty and tired and _old_. He turned back to the atrium and headed for the stairs.

Gwen sighed. "What are you on about, Jack?" she called after him. Ianto made a shushing noise, and he heard Gwen whisper something harshly to him in return. Jack ignored the argument and felt even more cranky that they had to have it at all. And that it was over a piece of crocheted yarnwork.

"Those kinds of things are for a home," he said from the railing. "Don't get comfortable here, any of you," he addressed them all. Tosh and Owen were staring at him over their respective monitors. "You all have places to go to at the end of the day. You should go to them." He glanced at Gwen before he turned to his office. "Take it home."

After they had all left for the day, the afghan was folded and returned to its place on the back of the sofa. Jack didn't look at it all weekend.

*

"Oh Jesus, WHERE IS THE BLOODY FIRE EXTINGUISHER?"

Jack dashed out of his office, took the steps down two at a time and watched the toaster oven go up in flames. Tosh waved her hands and shouted for Gwen, and Owen was glancing about for something to smack it with. Jack ran past a railing, grabbed the cloth hanging from it, and used it like a smothering blanket to smack the flames into submission.

Ash dusted the air and he was breathing heavily, his heart rate a bit murderous, but the smoke lifted to reveal Tosh's and Gwen's faces staring at his hands with a look of horror. He glanced down at the charred afghan in his hands and winced.

"Oops."

*

There was a squeak from one of the levels below him, and Jack meandered down the steps to find Owen, who had apparently decided to live at the Hub, ever since Diane had left.

"They're called jumpers," Jack said to Owen as he sat in the autopsy theatre, filling out paper work. "You should get one."

Owen looked at the afghan, whole and completely burn-free, draped about his shoulders. "I'm cold. Oh, and also I'm lazy."

"I thought that thing was damaged beyond repair," Jack said.

Owen made a notation in a file and closed the folder before sitting up and stretching a little. Jack heard one of his shoulder joints pop-click softly. "Ianto found a fabric rejuvenator in the archives," he said, shrugging. "Easier than getting another one."

Jack didn't add that they weren't even supposed to have the first one.

*

Ianto folded the afghan and set it on the back of the sofa. It was clean again, and probably smelled like Ianto's fabric softener. Jack sighed; he wanted to be the one smelling like Ianto's fabric softener.

The past few months hadn't killed his rare and unfounded dislike of the afghan. In fact, he was sure that while on the Valiant, he'd had about a dozen fantasies about smothering or strangling the Master to death with the afghan. On one hand, that made the afghan more endearing. On the other hand, it worried him that he had even thought about the afghan, or that the afghan was apparently, in his head, a weapon of mass destruction.

"So I get it," he said finally, jovially, stuffing his hands in his pockets and deciding not to wonder why the afghan bothered him anymore. It was resignation. Most of the time. "It's like a team mascot, right?"

"It's an afghan, Jack," Ianto said over his shoulder. "Let it go."

Jack wondered if he could put it in with a Weevil. That'd fuck it up but good.

"You know, even if I hadn't been able to repair it," Ianto said lightly, "I would have got another one, just to take the piss out of you." He picked up a series of coffee mugs and set them on a tray to take back into the kitchenette. "You make too big a deal out of something, and everyone else decides they need to press the issue."

Jack reached out and fingered the material. It was bad yarn, the kind of yarn that was a polyester blend, and not very welcoming, except that it was ragged with years of use, and soft from Ianto's laundry ministrations, and it probably smelled like the sunshine. Trust Ianto to line dry something like this, simply for the sheer effect of the summer air in the weave.

"I don't like the idea that all of you seem to want to live here," he said softly. "I mean, that can't be healthy."

Ianto raised one brow as he returned from the kitchenette. "Of course not," he said. "We all see how well that's worked out for you."

Jack backed away from the sofa and shook himself a little, watching Myfanwy circle overhead. This was her home too, his and hers. They should get matching towels or something.

"You should have a life. Not try to make one here," he whispered.

Ianto's hand was light on his back before he slipped around to stand in front of him. "You know, Gwen was making a virtue out of necessity." He smiled. "Jack, sometimes we _have_ to be here, because this is our job, even though sometimes we'd do anything if we could just pack it in for the night and go home."

"And you're here right now." Jack watched Ianto stack a pile of magazines on the coffee table. "So, is this necessity, or virtue?"

Ianto considered that. "Nothing that involves you and me could be remotely described as virtuous." Jack watched him straighten and finger the afghan on the back of the sofa. "And I think that it is quite fair to say, Sir, that the term 'necessity' is vague and limiting."

Jack sighed. It was pretty to say, and pretty to think. And all too neat, too pat to be true.

"In my head," Ianto said and he stripped off his tie and set it on the coffee table, "I imagine that the afghan is your nemesis." Jack leant against the rails and crossed his arms. Ianto unbuttoned his waistcoat and shirt and peeled them off together, draping them next to the tie.

Jack moved forward, but Ianto raised a hand warningly. "Like the Moriarty to your Holmes." He smirked. "The amusement, of course being derived from the fact that your villain would fail a Turing test." He undid his belt and trousers, slid them off with his underwear, and laid them over the rest of his clothing. Sometime as he had been speaking, he'd prized off his shoes and socks with dexterous toes. Maybe he'd taken them off some time ago.

Jack's hands felt fastened together, but he cocked his head. Ianto sprawled backwards onto the sofa and pulled the afghan from the back of it, using it to cover his crotch.

"I have a new game," Ianto said blandly. "Stationary hide and seek."

*

Martha had passed out on the sofa while the last of Owen's blood tests ran in the machine. Jack had told everyone to go home, that there was nothing they could do for now, but apparently that didn't include Martha, who, as far has he had known, had gotten a hotel room that she hadn't even checked into.

He was going to shake her and offer to drive her…wherever, when it occurred to him that not even Ianto was there, and he couldn't justify leaving at the moment, not with everything that'd been going on. Someone should be there. It also occurred to him that Martha probably remembered sleeping in much worse places, and that if she had really wanted a bed, she would have either ruthlessly evicted Jack from his or taken a taxi to her mystery hotel.

He pulled Moriarty from the back of the sofa and draped it across her frame, and Martha murmured something about Shakespeare under her breath.

*

It was about a week after Cardiff went to hell that Jack found himself finished with his last conference call, bereft of any paperwork to sign, and distinctly lacking in the energy to go chase yet another Weevil. Gwen steered him to the sofa when he sighed and leant on her desk.

"I don't need sleep," he said feebly, "it just doesn't work like that."

Gwen sat down on the edge of the sofa next to his waist and smoothed one hand down his face. "Then a not-kip will seem like a luxury."

He closed his eyes and let her fingers ghost down his cheek.

Later, maybe minutes, maybe hours, later, he opened his eyes and blearily watched Gwen and Ianto move about the Hub. Neither one of them spoke loud enough for Jack to make out what they were saying, just small murmurs and conversation that sounded like day to day life, really. The hum of machinery reminded him of something from his deep past, and he listened for the sound of the water running down into the pool from the tower. It was there, steady and low like the beach from far away.

He pulled the afghan up to his face from where someone had used it to cover his shoulders. Under his nose it smelled faintly of Tosh's perfume. A little like some of Owen's autopsy chemicals. The remains of Ianto's fabric softener. The bitter scent of a spilled cup of coffee. It had a little tint of Weevil on the bottom edge, he noted when he mashed it to his face, and wondered when that had happened.

Gwen glanced in his direction and he looked at her in mid-breath, wanting her to say something. Maybe _I told you so,_ or _It's okay to miss them,_ or _We are still your family, Jack,_ but she didn't. Instead, Gwen tilted her head and then turned back to Ianto, and they leant over a pile of blueprints Jack had stolen from the building commission.

Jack picked up a few more smells when he closed his eyes, something dark and organic that was probably dirt, something else that smelled like burning, and he understood that even though he hadn't meant to, he'd added to the combination of odors that had collected on this thing that he hated, this thing that Gwen brought down into the Hub and everyone else had used to mark out what he hadn't wanted to admit.

He closed his eyes and listened to the movement in the walls, in the bodies close by, face buried in the scratchiness of it, an ugly, tatty thing that proved stronger than he was.

END


End file.
